


and there's a keepsake my mother gave me

by philthestone



Series: and there's a keepsake my mother gave me [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, and characters that marvel studios is not going to develop in infinity war, is a circle, the venn diagram of characters i want marvel studios to develop in infinity war, women helping other women heal thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 11:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12035298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: “That was all you, girlie. Any backbone that boy’s got’s from you. Life’s more’n survival, I’s learned. The grit – the shit under your nails that makes you do that das’t rightthing.” He heaves a big sigh, rattling again, and Meredith bites down on her lower lip, more habit than anything. “That’s all on you, Quill. Every ‘lil piece of it, that good fiber in his bones. Helluva lot for one person to manage when they’re dead.”





	and there's a keepsake my mother gave me

**Author's Note:**

> in the rapidly-approaching hours before university kills my creative spirit i managed to churn out one of my favorite things i’ve written all year. anyways -- i love women, and i love how women support and uplift and inspire each other, and for the first time marvel has given me at least two (2) independently-developed female characters on screen together so. here we are. 
> 
> reviews are the knowledge that both edge of seventeen and mr blue sky are iconic songs

Meredith’s always loved the feeling of the wind in her hair, ever since she was a little girl flying down the long Missouri highways in her father’s pickup. She thinks maybe that’s why there’s always a breeze going on around here, always something moving through her curls.

She’d missed her curls, she had, more than she’d wanted to admit. And now they’re back, probably will be for the rest of foreseeable eternity. She can’t entirely say she’s _grateful,_ but it’s something, at least. She’s come to terms with everything. It’s been a while, after all.

She sits down, crosses her legs at the ankles, and looks up at the big blue sky.

“You come here jus’ to take the shit outta me again, girlie?”

Meredith snorts, and keeps on looking. “You wanna think that?”

“Dunno what I wants t’think. You awful quiet for someone who by usual can’t shut the hell up.”

Fat talk coming from a bastard whose mouth won’t stop motoring, but Meredith only grins and shrugs, tilting her head back further and humming. Neither of them _has_ to listen to the other, she figures is a widely known fact – things are mostly shiftable, around these parts. Like time doesn’t exist except in feelings. And feelings are exactly what connect them, absurd as it is, because Meredith knows you don’t raise the same boy, however half-done, and walk away without _something_.

But this is the damn afterlife, and they’ve got all the time in the world to figure that out. Sitting here in her field and looking up at the sky with Yondu Udonta’s not the worst thing Meredith could be doing.

“I got a feelin’,” says Meredith, and leaves it at that – tests the waters. Yondu shifts in his own spot, stretches his neck a bit.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too. Fuckin’ hells.”

Strange how everything up here seems to be designed around those – around hearts and souls and nothing else. Or maybe – not _strange._ Strange in a good way, like nothing Meredith knew before. _Got a heart bigger than your head_ , her daddy would always say, half fondness and half reprimand. _That fast heart of yours is gonna land you in some trouble someday, Ms. Quill_ , had said her eleventh grade teacher, eyes appraising behind her thick-lensed glasses. 

And just recently: _Warmth and sunlight and loving fire_ , from a woman who Meredith found standing across from her one day, brought there by nothing but feeling. Sammra is tall and lithe and beautiful in a way Meredith knows her daughter is – a mother’s intuition, maybe, though Yondu claims, ornery, that she’s made him tell her with girlish excitement the details of what Gamora looks like – 

But still. 

_Perceptive_ , Meredith had told her new friend, and recognized the particular sort of sadness held in the other woman’s brown eyes, reflected in Meredith’s green. 

Hearts and souls are what bring people together up here, and no matter what Yondu says, it’s what caught them two in each other’s orbit, too. Don’t matter if the connection is in this world or that – if there’s a _connection_ , you get stuck as each other’s family no matter the plane of existence.

Meredith sighs – a big, heaving thing – and lets her head tilt to the side. Yondu’s looking up, too, but Meredith doesn’t know exactly what it is he sees. She’s figured it out, by now – that nothing’s really real here. Mostly just different shades of light. It’s whatever you _need_ to see, right at that moment.

Except not always, not really.

Not _now_ , when for some reason she’s feeling that need more than she has in a long time.

“I just –” she starts. “I just wish. That I could _see_ him. Them – I know what it is they’re gonna do, Yondu, and I can’t keep an eye on them. How’s that right?”

Yondu makes a noise, like a grunt at the back of his throat, and keeps on looking up. She’d let it go, she would, but there’s this absurd itch under her skin right now, like it’s not supposed to itch when you’ve been floating around as just your heart and soul for the rest of ever. She misses _being there_ like she’d missed her curls, completely justified and yet an ache out of her control in more ways than one. She’s not supposed to feel like she did stuck in that hospital bed, her daddy telling her it’s gonna be fine but her knowing in her heart Peter’s gonna get himself hurt again fighting bullies and she can’t do a damn thing to stop it.

That seems to be the running trend, here. 

A mad Titan. Well, Meredith’s heard and seen worst. Something about being dead gives you a particular scope of things, even if you’re not there in person to see ‘em.

“It ain’t,” says Yondu, cutting through her mind’s nattering. “Most things ain’t right. Would’a thought a dead girl’d know that by now.”

“You old fool,” says Meredith, but there isn’t really bite to her voice.

“How’d you know what it is they gonna do, huh?”

“How do _you_ ,” Meredith shoots back, finally looking over. He bares his teeth, crooked and disgusting even in death, and narrows his eyes at the sky.

“Damn you, Quill,” is all he says.

“Yeah,” says Meredith, “but you can _feel_ it, too.” She pauses, flattens her palms against the thick Missouri grass that isn’t really Missouri grass, hasn’t been since she first opened her eyes all those years ago. 

And then,

“They ain’t gonna die,” he says.

“Don’t you go spoutin’ half-truths to make me feel better, you big blue bastard,” says Meredith. 

“They ain’t gonna die,” he says again, and Meredith’s used to folks saying things – her father would say, _It’s gonna be alright_ , over and over until she couldn’t help but half believe him. Jason would say, _I love you_ , and Meredith believed that, too, for a hell of a long time. 

Pops wasn’t anywhere near that sort of shit-sucking jackass – Yondu’s mouth has left a footprint on Meredith’s angrier moments, it seems – but still. It was never the truth. 

Yondu talks like he’s surer of their ability to stay alive than anything else in existence. Meredith plucks at the grass with her fingers and shakes her head slightly, half-smiling.

“You still talk to that big lug’s kid?”

A casual question, not quite an obvious conversation changer, but – still. Bastard.

“Kamaria’s a sweetheart.”

“She’s nearly’s tall as you is,” says Yondu, wry amusement in his voice. “Shit, woman. The girl’s folks is one thing, but this? Yer a whole other level ‘a _nice_.”

Meredith sighs, and squints a bit at the sun, even though she doesn’t need to. She’s got a cord around her wrist, a simple clay bracelet, gifted by the little girl who’s always gonna remain that little girl. 

“Ain’t nothing wrong with bein’ nice,” says Meredith. “And it’s somethin’ – it’s _something_. We all have some – some common thread, or somethin’.”

“Or somethin’,” he echoes, more of a grunt than anything.

“You should come see Gamora’s mother, some time,” Meredith continues, deliberate, something to help her keep her mind off things. “She’s got the dryest damn lines you ever heard, you’ll be laughin’ your sorry blue ass off before you know it. And her daddy – he’s a serious one, now, probably won’t take to you like I did, but –”

“Shit’s own sake, Meredith, stop talkin’. They ain’t gonna die.”

“It’s not that I’m afraid of,” she says.

“Bunch’a dumbass kids gonna take on the das’t most powerful sonufabitch in the whole damn galaxy and you ain’t afraid they’re gonna _die_.” Yondu blows out a stream of air, half a whistle like it’s almost a habit, and leans further back. “What in all hells’re you afraid of, then.”

Meredith takes a deep breath, and shrugs. It’s not _fear_ , exactly. It’s something deeper, something that goes beyond the acceptance and contentment that come with being here. It’s perspective, is what it is. All these years, and some deeply-rooted motherly instinct is still cutting right through all that perspective.

Sammra had called it _strength_ , only this morning. Well, not _it_ – they hadn’t really talked more than sat in companionable silence and held hands. She was a hand-holding type, that woman. Meredith appreciated it. But she’d said, in her strange melodic accent, _There’s a strength_ , and left it at that.

Maybe Meredith should still be back there, sitting with her. 

“You don’t know,” says Yondu. “Figures.”

“It’s not death,” she says. “I know death. For what it’s worth, this might be better than anything else. But – I just –”

“Your heart still breaks anyways.”

Or maybe not.

Meredith leans forward, arms sliding against her bare legs, and feels herself smiling despite herself. Yondu stiffens, like he’s caught his own mistake.

That was fast, Meredith thinks. Lately, he’s let more and more of them slip by.

“Don’t mean nothin’ by that ‘bout _meself_ , just – ‘case you were gonna run that big mouth’a yours –”

“Uh huh.”

“It ain’t apply to me, y’hear. Jus’ you an’ your – your damn sentiment – go on and git, woman, don’t look at me like that.”

“I ain’t got nowhere to go,” says Meredith. “So I’ll look all I please, Captain Udonta. At you and your feelin’ heart.”

“Fuck off, Quill.”

Meredith only sighs and flops backwards onto the thick grass, feeling it poke through the thin cotton of her t-shirt. There are no birds out here, she’s noticed, no critters – just feelings, and light, and this big blue sky and her daddy’s old beat-up Camaro, occasionally sitting right smack dab in the middle of things.

Now _that_ was a way to get the wind running through her hair, thinks Meredith. Blasting the radio on full volume and half-flying across the road. A certain kind of control over your own destiny that nothing else could give.

“Dumb kid got that from you,” says Yondu, sudden, like he’s somehow read her thoughts. Meredith raises an eyebrow, tilts her head in the grass. He’s still not looking at her – a deliberate thing or just out of habit, she’s not sure – maybe he’s wary she’ll smack him again. That was ages ago, but, still. 

“What,” says Meredith.

“Aw, hell – most things. But his dumbass need t’be in the thick ofit – nearly blew the thrusters off the first ship I let him at.”

“You encouraged it, you big bastard, I know you did.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

It’s not fear, Meredith decides, thinking of her new friend’s steady hands and digging her nails into the dirt. It’s thick and grounding in a way dirt’s been since she was a little girl dreaming of the stars. It’s not fear. It’s more – love, or something.

“I wonder,” says Meredith, “if I wish hard enough, I’d be allowed to see Orion’s Belt.”

“Still a flarkin’ dumbass name,” says Yondu, and just for that Meredith knows he understands exactly why she’d want to see the stars. You get one good one and it orients you for life, like a point of control in a world where there isn’t any. Problem comes when your star’s your child, and a real good one at that.

Which is maybe why her heart’s breaking in the first place. But it’ll be alright – it’ll be alright. 

Meredith’s got a feeling.

“You must think I’m going crazy,” she says.

Yondu breathes in, a soft rattle to it like always – comes from dying from frozen lungs, same as how some moments Meredith feels like her head isn’t wholly screwed on – and then grunts.

“You jus’ wanted to piss me off with yer moanin’; don’t worry, I know.”

“It’s good fun, ain’t it.”

Yondu snorts – a uniquely unattractive sound – and bares his teeth again.

“Crazy woman.”

“Brain tumor.”

“An’ I froze my damn scrote off in the black,” says Yondu. “Probl’y why I’m stuck here gabbin’ with _you_.”

“Hey,” says Meredith, ignoring him, digging her nails in further. “Hey – if we’re wrong –”

“We ain’t wrong.”

“But _if_ we are – just listen to me, _if_ we are.” She takes a deep breath. “I just gotta say one more time. Thank you.” 

Yondu is silent, like he almost never is. The moment stretches out, strangely comfortable, and Meredith looks over again, watches his jaw twitch, send ripples through the ragged scars patterning his temples. Thick-skinned asshole, he’d called himself once. A man with a lot to block out, inside and out. 

“You did a _shit_ job of it,” adds Meredith, belligerent. “I’d smack you again if I could. But – thank you. I’m real proud of him, Yondu.”

“That wasn’t me,” he says, strangely quiet. Meredith sits up very slightly. 

“What d’you mean, you old fool. Of co –”

“That was all you, girlie. Any backbone that boy’s got’s from you. You an’ that green-skinned girl, but – shit.” He sniffs, harsh and jerky, and finally leans back and offers her a grimace. Meredith feels her mouth close shut. “I was jus’ there to push him around, tough him up. And a flarked job of it I did, too, but – life’s more’n survival, I’s learned. The grit – the shit under your nails that makes you do that das’t right _thing_.” He heaves a big sigh, rattling again, and Meredith bites down on her lower lip, more habit than anything. “That’s all on you, Quill. Every ‘lil piece of it, that good fiber in his bones. Helluva lot for one person to manage when they’re dead.”

The breeze moves through their reality, filled with feelings.

“Thank you,” she says, again, her voice wavering.

“You cry on me and I up an’ _leave_ , girl.”

“Yeah,” says Meredith, around her cracking voice, “I’ll go sit with my daughter-in-law’s father, see how _you_ like bein’ lonely.” But she wipes at the wetness on her cheeks anyway.

“Like hell you will. Tell ‘im his girl’s got more gumption than all the damn Ravagers in the shittin’ galaxy put t’gether. Woman with a head on her shoulders an’ her heart in the right place, that one.” He grins. “Never did like me.”

Meredith snorts – another mistake, one that she doesn’t point out. _Her heart in the right place_. Saying it out loud like it’s something right and important.

“Now that ain’t hard, is it?” He ignores her with a dignity she didn’t think he possessed. She continues, half-tempted to prod him in the shoulder like she might a close friend. “Go on then, go and tell him yourself.”

“Hell no,” says Yondu, and lies fully back in the grass, closing his damned red eyes.

Meredith takes a moment to feel the wind run through her curls, and then –

“You really think they’ll be alright?”

“I got a feelin’,” says Yondu, and Meredith throws back her head and laughs.

**

Intellectually, Nebula’s known for a while now that her cravings for solitude and general hatred of other people are not inherent traits that she has carried since birth. Now, more than ever, she feels something niggle at the pit of her circuitry, like she’s supposed to break free of this irritating cage that’s such a frustrating mix of self-built and _not_.

Still – there’s something to be said about sitting alone in an abandoned, shadowy hallway, far from the warehouse full of morons a click away, getting drunk and celebrating a victory and _dancing_.

Not that Nebula does not think that this isn’t, finally, a victory worth celebrating. She just – and this comes to her in a sudden bout of clarity that would have her curling into her knees if every part of her wasn’t designed to kill those urges before they even happened – she doesn’t know _how_.

“You’re being sloppily loud,” she says, abruptly, into the apparent silence. “If you were trying to ambush me I would have already killed you.”

“I’m very clearly not trying to ambush you,” says Gamora, padding the rest of the way out of the hall’s shadows and standing in front of Nebula, tall above her. Her hair is loose, spilling over her shoulders, her movements similarly fluid. Nebula’s mods can pick up the clinging scents of the abandoned party on her sister, the sweat and leather and fruity cocktail and hard tequila that Rocket calls child’s play, and something of Quill’s terrible cologne. She scowls. 

“Move over,” says Gamora. “I’m sitting down.”

“I came here for solitude.”

Gamora ignores her, a pointed bluntness to the way she breaks eye contact and sits. Nebula watches her as she does, swivelling elegantly on her bare feet and sliding down the wall in one smooth movement to – yes – tuck her knees up against her chest. It’s hardly a sprawl – she couldn’t do that wearing the dress she is, a tight, impractical cotton thing with sleeves down to her elbows and a soft scooping neckline that Nebula might call attractive if it was worn by anyone else. But she’s more relaxed than Nebula, and not for the first time, Nebula feels a strange pang of – _something_ – in her whirring chest.

Gamora inhales, long and deep, and then lets out the air slowly.

“You disappeared,” she says, finally. “I thought I’d find you out here.”

“I’ve become predictable,” Nebula mutters. “Next time I’ll be untraceable.”

Gamora snorts, and slides her legs out in front of her, wiggles her toes. Nebula rolls her eyes; she _disappeared_ , yes, but Gamora disappeared _first_ , and the other idiots might not be trained to catch small vulnerabilities but Nebula can see the very slight dishevel of her sister’s hair, the infinitesimal bruise to her lips. There’s something to be said about subtlety, and there’s nothing subtle about hiding away in a dark corner in the middle of a large party with half-Terran hands all over you.

She opens her mouth, snideness on the tip of her tongue, and sees the very faint curl on her sister’s lips.

Nebula says, “I can’t believe you have somehow drank enough to become inebriated.” 

“Mmm,” says Gamora. “Just a little. I didn’t think it could happen.”

“Clearly,” says Nebula. “Or you wouldn’t have impaired yourself like an idiot.”

“I’m not impaired.”

“Dancing like a moron in public,” scoffs Nebula, flexing her hand. “Not wearing shoes. Call it what you like, sister, but you’re hardly being vigilant.”

“Is everyone really so terrible that you had to come all the way out here?” asks Gamora, once again ignoring her. Nebula would be frustrated if she didn’t suddenly feel so absurdly _tired_ (she doesn’t get tired), like the fight has drained out of her circuits and leaked onto the polished laminate floors.

(She was _built_ to fight, and nothing else.)

Nebula considers Gamora’s question; no, maybe everyone isn’t really so terrible. The Widow appears sensible enough, though her affinity for Gamora has made Nebula doubt that, and Odinson is a powerful ally if nothing else. And of course Kraglin has always been tolerable in his own weird way, but he and that insufferable fool Barton have already passed out somewhere from the alcohol, leaving Nebula with no one to talk to but Banner, the only other person not heedless and half-drunk in the thick of things (death, Nebula supposes wearily, is perhaps the only thing that warrants such senselessness), who had apologized very sincerely before crossing the room to stay as far away from her as possible. 

Something about keeping his stress levels low, Mantis had said, appearing at Nebula’s side in that strange, nervous way of hers, smiling her absurd smile. “You are very scary,” she had said. “But in a good way.”

Nebula taps her fingers against the floor.

“Mantis was not completely unbearable,” she says. 

For whatever reason, Gamora snorts, loud and undignified, letting her head thump quietly against the wall behind them. Nebula feels that she should scowl, but cannot. It’s unnerving.

“You should go back,” Nebula says, and grimaces before her next words: “And – have fun.”

Gamora is silent for a long, long moment, so silent that Nebula can hear the combined mechanical whirring of their respective circuits, faint in the dark. Hers are louder, _more_ , inorganic in a way Gamora’s never have been and never will be. She realizes that she had meant what she said – Gamora _should_ go back, _should_ relax and smile and laugh and enjoy the company of her ridiculous friends and idiotic husband and this newfound freedom of theirs.

Thanos is gone. 

Nebula feels her fists clench, abruptly, at that thought.

And then Gamora says, voice croaking:

“I don’t know what to do.”

Nebula turns, slowly, to look at her.

“What do you mean,” she says.

(She knows what she means. She knows. She _knows_ –)

Gamora says, “He’s gone, Nebula.”

The air seems to suck out of the hallway all at once.

“Yes.”

“He’s gone and – and I don’t – I keep forgetting.” A beat, two, one long, measured breath that to anyone else would be perfectly even but Nebula can sense the hitch. She was built to sense it, _made_ to pick up on it. Maybe not in the way someone else’s sister would, but. She lets her fists unfurl, and watches expressionless as Gamora turns to face her.

Gamora’s eyes are dark, shimmering with unshed tears that make Nebula want to recoil, hair soft and waving, lips slightly parted, loosened by the alcohol that really, Nebula thinks, must have been consumed in gallons to affect her this much. 

As fitting an occasion as any to get wasted for the first time in one’s life, offers a small voice in the back of Nebula’s head that makes her think she has been spending too much time around Ravagers. 

But it’s not just that; there’s an openness to her sister’s face that Nebula almost wants to sneer at. A softness that she’s always possessed, _innate_ , something that remained stubbornly present throughout it all even though great pains were taken to hide it so carefully that at some point even Nebula forgot it was there. 

She can hardly forget anymore – she has seen it worm its way to the surface when Gamora is around Quill or Groot or Mantis, small moments that are almost too many compared to the nothingness of before. It’s not nearly as quick coming or natural as in some others, but it’s _there_ , and it’s always been a weakness – Nebula has always _seen_ it as a weakness, and seethed silently at how still, her sister always managed to best her despite this one, critical vulnerability. 

Things are different now, though. It is, suddenly, no longer a weakness, and Nebula prepares herself for the familiar curl of jealously in her gut at yet one more thing she can’t be.

“I just,” says Gamora, “I came to find you – I thought you would feel the same.”

The curl – it doesn’t come.

“I do,” says Nebula. Again, a sudden wrenching need to repeat herself: “I – yes.”

Gamora nods. Nebula can see the muscles of her neck move when she swallows, thick and hard, and reaches over to take Nebula’s metallic hand in her own, smooth-skinned one. She stiffens, though not nearly as hard as she might have had only yesterday; Gamora tightens her grip.

“I don’t know what to do,” she repeats, softer.

Nebula thinks again of all the people her sister has surrounded herself with, ridiculous as they might be – their smiles, their warmth, their care, alien to her as they are annoyingly familiar now. A looping reality, Nebula thinks – how things she does not know become things she hates, and things she hates lead further to things she does not know. 

She hates Thanos, for example. Present tense. And now here she is, wanting desperately to be _more_ than that, and she has no idea where to start. 

For the first time, though – Gamora is here, by her side, right from the very beginning.

(But maybe that was the case all along, Nebula thinks, tightness in the cords of her throat.)

“You will be fine,” says Nebula, a strange roughness to her voice, while Gamora looks down at their joined hands. There’s something relieving about the strength in her sister’s grip, something that Nebula thinks suddenly she wouldn’t have been able to find with anyone else.

Gamora brings her eyes up; there’s fierceness there that was not present a second before. _Foolish_ , Nebula tells herself, _to assume it had gone away at all_.

“So will you,” she says.

Thanos is gone, and the world is different but just the same, and Nebula feels a sudden lump of emotion in her throat, pushing past the wiring and machinery, that has her jaw clench with a force she didn’t think she was capable of exerting. 

_He’s gone_ , she thinks again. _He’s gone_.

She opens her mouth to breathe and it comes to her in a gasp, half-stuttering. Gamora smiles, a half-breaking thing, and leans in, their foreheads pressing together. The shadows in the hall are simply shadows, now, and not a treacherous place to hide oneself in, always prepared to leap out and attack. Nebula listens to the harmonic whirring of circuitry and this time, she doesn’t stiffen at all.

“We’ll be fine,” she repeats, and hears Gamora’s breath hitch properly, closes her eyes against the tears that come, the ones that she is incapable of shedding but can feel spilling freely down her sister’s cheeks like she cannot remember them having ever done before. Not since they were children. 

Nebula lets herself relax.

**

Of the many things that have accompanied being part of a real family, Mantis thinks that her favorite by far is the revelation that you can take pictures of things.

Things – moments. Concrete images, where you can only see half an emotional story, caught frozen in the colourful plastic sheet. They are like pleasant echoes of good feelings, and they do not feel like an artificial solution when she looks at them to feel better after an upsetting day.

“Mantis, have you seen the – oh, are you still looking at these?”

Mantis looks up to see Gamora, holding a large metal tub full of assorted clothes, gear, and the occasional explosive and biting her lip. She is hassled, Mantis can tell, though she looks calm and composed enough, her hair woven into a neat braid down her back and her clothes loose and comfortable. There is always something about leaving a place, Mantis has noticed, that leaves most beings on edge. They’re leaving Terra, Mantis knows. They’ve been here long enough – a sentiment Peter declared loudly and with much gesticulation just last night, as though he thought that would mask the pain he felt at leaving again.

Or – not pain, exactly. Emotions are tricky things, Mantis knows better than most, and this was not as consuming as simple pain. More … heartache.

Vastly different from the reluctance and twinging fear that threaded under their every-day conversation when they had first landed here, in the city of New York, at the Avenger’s base, present still before the quiet decision to make a short trip down to Missouri.

 _Pops is still alive_ , Peter had said one night, less than three days after Thanos – 

After.

(Mantis does not like thinking of unhappy things.)

But “Pops” had still been alive, and Peter and Gamora had gone, and Mantis had spent a week in the happy companionship of Drax and Nebula and Rocket and Groot, and her new friends the Avengers, exploring this large, strange facility and letting herself feel everything good that had been so deeply buried in the past month. 

“Yes?” asks Mantis, smiling at Gamora. She has gotten much better at smiling over the past few years.

“I was wondering if you’ve seen Rocket’s tool belt – the one he uses out of airlock, you know? I’m giving all this junk to Peter to put away before take off and I can’t find it anywhere.”

“It is in the cooling unit beside the iced cream,” Mantis remembers, still smiling. The plastic square she is holding is glossy under her fingers – a new one, she thinks, not an old one. _Polaroids_ , Peter had called them, grinning, and Mantis found it fascinating that there was no hesitance in his sharing of his childhood, this time. Just excitement.

Gamora blinks, twice, her mouth parting very slightly.

“Of course,” she says. “Of course it is. Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” says Mantis, turning back to her pile of Polaroids. In front of her Gamora turns, as though to leave, but hesitates. Mantis traces the people in the picture in front of her and feels the other woman come up behind her, still holding her box, and look down.

“That’s Pops,” offers Gamora, when Mantis’s fingers stop over the last person. His hair is a tufty white, face obviously lined and weathered even in the small, grainy shot. Mantis likes his funny one-sided cap and the fact that his nose looks like Peter’s. She can hear Gamora shift on her feet behind her, and then – “Have you been looking at these this whole time?”

Mantis nods enthusiastically. “I like them very much!” she says. “They make me feel happy.”

Gamora doesn’t say anything for a moment, before suddenly leaning down to deposit her box on and floor and perching on the edge of the table, beside Mantis’s pile. She picks up the next photo from the pile – a very good picture, Mantis knows, because she has looked through this pile several times in the last half hour – and despite the tension Mantis felt earlier, a small, private smile creeps over Gamora’s lips.

“You are very beautiful there,” Mantis tells her happily, honestly, leaning over so that she too can see. “You are always beautiful, but there especially.”

“Thank you, Mantis,” says Gamora in a quiet voice, still looking at the picture. Peter had said on his own trip through the lounge earlier that morning (he had been missing a boot and looking for a misplaced set of blasters) that this one was his favorite, also, with a wide grin and a wink.

Mantis can understand why. Gamora, leaning against the door of what Mantis has learned is called a _car_ , shoulders relaxed and offering a wry, amused smile at something out of the camera. The hood behind her is striped blue and orange almost like the Milano is – _Can’t believe Pops_ kept _the frickin’ Camaro_ , Peter had said – and there’s an invisible breeze catching at the curled ends of her hair, lifting them from her shoulders. Behind her is a thin grey stretch of concrete, and behind that – big swaths of green and blue.

Mantis cannot remember her home world, but she does not think it had these big stretches of blue or green. She likes them, and how big and free and open they are, kind of like Peter himself. He had been so happy when they got back, scooping Mantis up in a big bear hug to the background sound of Gamora asking everyone if they had _behaved_ that past week. Mantis knows each person has a different sort of happiness; Drax’s is always full and all-consuming, Gamora’s quiet and measured, Rocket’s sporadic and Groot’s bright and simple. But Peter’s, warm and open as it is, has always had a strain of something bittersweet under it, and for some reason, Mantis hadn’t been able to feel that in his hug.

“Did Peter take this picture?” asks Mantis now, her antennae twitching, watching Gamora’s smile morph into something more deliberately casual.

“No,” says Gamora, shaking her head. “Pops did.”

She leaves it at that, but Mantis nods.

“He misses his daughter,” she guesses, and sees Gamora’s shoulders stiffen.

“I –” She shakes herself, very slightly. “Yes, he does.”

She reaches over suddenly, taking the next picture in the pile. Mantis recognizes this one, too. It’s one of the older ones, its colour faded and the plastic aged, slightly bent in one corner. Meredith Quill is just as beautiful as Gamora is, is all Mantis can think. She doesn’t know much about her outside of the deep love Peter feels and the songs programmed into their ship’s maindrive, but Mantis thinks that she might have enjoyed meeting her. There is so much of his mother that Peter carries with him, and Peter is a force of good, even if Rocket does complain about his dirty socks a lot. This must mean, Mantis reasons, that his mother was also a force of good. Gamora is a force of good, too, strong and fearless in a way Mantis can never hope to be. Mantis thinks that Gamora’s mother must have been even more a force of good than Peter’s, for her daughter to be so strong.

Mantis watches how Gamora handles the photo delicately, with a care that she did not have holding the photo of herself, and tilts her head.

“I do not think I had a mother,” Mantis says, quietly. “So I do not have a force to draw on. Am I allowed to draw on you?”

“What do you mean?” asks Gamora, looking up from the photo, an odd mix between curious and wary that makes Mantis want to twist her hands together.

“You are a force of good,” Mantis offers. “Like your mothers were. I do not think I had a mother, but I have you.”

Gamora stiffens, fingers tightening around the photo in her hands, and for a moment Mantis is worried she has said the wrong thing. She does that sometimes – says something she is not supposed to say, honest where it is not socially acceptable. Drax says that honesty is always honourable, no matter the consequence, but sometimes, Mantis knows, it can make people she cares about uncomfortable.

“I –” Gamora makes a face, eyes closing momentarily, and then jerks her head to the side almost as though she is shaking it _no_. “I’m not –”

She stops, like she doesn’t know what to say, and looks back down at the photo in her hands as though for an answer. It remains silent, like photos do, and Mantis swallows, wondering if she should say something else. 

Gamora does not seem unhappy, exactly, or even uncomfortable, but – confused, perhaps. Emotions are tricky things, as Mantis noted earlier. The emotions associated with missing loved ones, for example are never purely happy. Mantis has learned this time and again over the years, but something about watching the people aboard the Milano has also taught her that you don’t necessarily need _pure_ , untainted happiness to be happy.

It is hard for her, Mantis thinks, to not want to immediately take away all the bad emotions from within the good. But then – Peter had come back from Missouri lacking the heaviness of the bittersweet under his joy.

“Mantis,” says Gamora suddenly. “Would you like to tape these pictures up on the wall?”

“Oh, yes!” says Mantis immediately. “Looking at them is so wonderful.”

“I know,” says Gamora, taking her hand and pressing the picture of Peter’s mother into it. “I’m sure you’ll put them up in a very aesthetically pleasing way.”

“But,” says Mantis, “then I will not be helping with cleaning before we go. I am sorry that I am not strong with carrying boxes like you.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Gamora again, elegant silver eyebrows drawing together in half a frown. She has not yet completed her thought from earlier, about being good. Mantis doesn’t bring it up, but rather takes a moment, finally clasping her hands together. This is a nervous habit that Drax says makes her appear deceptively puny and weak. That is supposed to be a compliment, Rocket always adds, but Mantis does not know how true it is. Sometimes, she really does feel puny and weak. 

“After – everything that has happened,” she says, slowly. “I still do not know what I am supposed to be doing.”

Gamora is surprised – Mantis does not need to read her emotions to recognize this, in the lifting of her brows and the part of her mouth. 

“Oh,” she says.

“Yes,” says Mantis. “I want to take bad feelings away, but Peter and Rocket and you have all said I am not supposed to do that. And I am not physically strong or beautiful like you.” Mantis frowns and shakes her head, correcting herself: “ _Very_ beautiful. I am a little beautiful.”

“Mantis,” says Gamora, something Mantis can’t identify catching at the end of the word. But she stops herself, and her frown slips away. “Mantis,” she says again. “You don’t need to be any of those things to be strong or –” She pauses, and leans down, taking Mantis’s hand in her own in a gesture that surprises Mantis more than anything else that has happened these past few weeks.

Gamora feels nothing but _warm_ , a fierce wave of honesty and reassurance washing over Mantis all the way down to the tips of her toes. And underneath it, a tiny ripple of uncertainty, directed inwards. “You can just be _you_. And that’s enough.”

“I do not know how to be me,” Mantis admits. This is a strange admission, but she finds that it is true. The blanket of reassurance helps her to articulate it out loud. 

Gamora’s grip tightens, but not so much that it hurts. 

“I know,” she says.

“Oh,” says Mantis.

“But it’s okay,” continues Gamora, pulling her hands away; Mantis’s hands peal away from each other, sticky, and she realizes she is still holding the picture of Peter’s mother, her palms flat over its face and back. “It’s okay, because –” She looks away, head jerking to the side in a gesture that Mantis knows she shares with her sister – “I’m figuring that out too. So is Nebula, for what it’s worth,” she adds, a small, wry smile tugging at her lips, “and she’s probably stronger than both of us combined.”

Mantis thinks that it would be very nice to learn to be herself alongside a force of good like Gamora, and even alongside Nebula. She has a lot of bad feelings, but she is always not mean to Mantis. Mantis likes her very much.

“It is okay,” Mantis repeats, slowly, her smile returning at the same pace. “It is okay.”

In the picture, Meredith Quill is smiling too.

**

Gamora has always loved laughter.

Perhaps not the most expected of revelations for someone who has spent so little of their life in the galaxy laughing. She’s sure, actually, that in the earliest days of their acquaintance (alliance, partnership, _friendship_ ) Peter would have, in fact, _laughed_ at such a declaration.

Gamora, her face set in hard lines as she pursed her lips or bit her cheek, who tried her hardest to hold back even the smallest of smiles lest she betray herself.

But she’s always – always – loved laughter.

Unsurprising, then, that she’d found it harder and harder by the day to pull away from the idiots she’d found herself with. Like an invisible cord was tying her to them, knot pulled tighter at every obnoxious joke Rocket cracked, every overloud guwaff Drax gave, every serene smile Groot offered. And more than anything she cannot help but look back and laugh at _herself_ , for ever pretending that she had not immediately gravitated towards Peter, a man who clung almost foolishly to high spirits and teasing rapport, who found time for his easy, affectionate humor in even the most dire of situations. 

He was an idiot, yes, and certainly had many flaws. But he made her laugh.

“– n’t think I’m above callin’ everyone in here to settle the score – hey, _Gamo_ – ah, hey!”

Their laughter sounds like peals of a bell, filling up the cabin space as Gamora twists out of his grasp easily and flips him backwards onto the bunk, their combined weight making the mattress bounce. She can hear herself laughing, voice almost hoarse with the weight of it, can taste her lips pulled back in a grin and can feel Peter almost _giggling_ under her, out of breath and pinned down against the bed, eyes nearly squeezed shut as he rolls his head back and _laughs_.

“Clearly I am correct,” says Gamora, through her own gasps. In a body that is designed for efficiency and endurance, she is not used to being short of breath. “ _Clearly_ – don’t even try, Peter Quill, you know I’m not ticklish – _clearly_ Edge of the Seventh Teen –”

“Edge of Seventeen –”

“– is the superior song,” Gamora finishes, arms barely twitching where they have him pinned down by the shoulders. Her knees are bracketing his hips, dipping into the hard springs of the bed, and their foreheads are nearly touching with the headiness of how _happy_ they are, right now, in this moment. Arguing about a song.

“Compared to Mr. Blue Sk – aw, shit, no, I can’t tickle you you can’t tickle me- _e_ , _Gamora_ –”

“Concede defeat,” she says, leaning down even further so she has him pressed down at three points, their foreheads finally touching. He’s warm against her skin, vibrating with energy and mirth. She presses her knees closer together and trails another foot over the inside of his leg, grinning impossibly wider when he squirms. “Yield, and I’ll let you admit defeat with – _mmph_ –”

She’s laughing again, against his mouth. A dirty play, to be sure, but she knows he’ll be quick to remind her that he used to be a con-man ( _used to be_ , she’ll quip, once again with humor that she’s only recently become re-familiarized with dancing over her tongue), and she will reach down and take hold of his wrist and remind him that she’s been trained to kill a person using only her pinky finger since childhood.

She leans into the second kiss, taking it for herself and feeling teeth clack because for the life of them neither can seem to _stop laughing_ , and then pulls away, breathing hard. Peter’s eyes are bright and green as ever, his cheeks flushed, curls sticking up against the bedsheets. Maybe it’s always been instinct, but Gamora finds herself taking a moment, tracing every slope and line of his scruffy face before proceeding, making sure nothing is – just. Making sure. She supposes that now, more than ever before in all the years she’s known him, they have the freedom to just _be_. But there’s something about the suspended animation of momentary death that has made her realize there’s more to it than just being here, right now, and so she stops. Breathes. _Feels_. There are lines around Peter’s eyes now that didn’t exist five years ago, the first time she kicked him in the stomach outside the pawn shop. They form crow’s feet that travel down his cheeks, prints of time that Gamora has learned recently his grandfather also has.

 _I know there’s more to it than this,_ he’d said – _Pops_ had said, along with it the pleasant request that she call him by his familial moniker. _But lookin’ at him now, I almost – it’s like I got a chance to see bits of Meredith get older like she never did._

They had been sitting outside on the front porch, she and he, in an odd companionable silence that Gamora had silently relished. Peter had been sprawled on the couch, fallen asleep halfway through digging through boxes of old junk, long limbs hanging down to the floor and only partially covered by the blanket his grandfather had draped over him. 

Gamora had not realized, until then, just how young Meredith Quill had been. Strange, perhaps, given that she, too, had been a very small child when _her_ mother was killed, but then – that was it, she’d thought, then. _Thinks_ , now. She’d been a very small child, and to her, her mother was all grown up, older than Gamora could ever fathom being.

Her mother had made people laugh. 

It’s a memory that filtered into her consciousness only a few days ago, sudden and blurry. But it was _there_ , as though it strong-armed its way to the front of her consciousness for the sole purpose of making her realize something. She’d been smiling, larger than she remembered smiling in a while, at the sight of Rocket and Drax arguing over the colour of their brand new galley table (an eye-shocking neon green) while Peter groaned into his hands to the side. And suddenly, like a jolt to her system, she had thought – hadn’t my mother made people laugh?

There’s a newness to these memories that makes Gamora doubt herself, more so because she knows that this is an aspect of their healing process that Nebula would not understand. But Thanos is _gone_. There is a freedom here that Gamora has not tasted since her parents were alive and full of _being_ just as she is trying to learn how to be, now.

She had thought – _Hadn’t my mother made people laugh_? And, quickly after – _What was the timber of my father’s?_

She can’t trust herself on this, and she looks down at the lines around Peter’s eyes and thinks of Meredith Quill and her own elusive memories and something shifts again.

“What?” asks Peter, still half a laugh; Gamora realizes that she’s been silent and unmoving for a lot longer than she had intended. He’s still trapped under her, such that she can feel the marginally-faster rise and fall of his chest, the steady beat of his heart that does not match hers but harmonizes with it, warm and real.

“I was just,” Gamora pauses, tilts her head. “Thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“About mothers.”

He lets out another laugh: this one is sharp and barking, his expression turning incredulous.

“You’ve got your hot piece of a husband pinned down under you and you’re thinkin’ about _mothers_?”

Gamora lets out a huff, only just stopping herself from rolling her eyes, and moves her arms to rest them comfortably against his chest. The thin chain holding the scratched titanium washer they’d dug up to act in place of a wedding ring is visible against his throat, miraculously still as in-tact as her own, even after everything. The concept of being tied irrefutably to one another had at some become something that everyone in their piece-meal family knew to be indisputable, an obvious fact. A wry sense of irony, some haphazard childhood memories and what Drax had called the heedless abandon of youth were what prompted the rings, and Groot performed a ceremony because really, which one of them was going to refuse him?

Anyway – _why not_ , Gamora had thought. At that point, there was still the imminent possibility of them all dying at the hands of a mass murderer and child kidnapper. Funny how that description could have also been applied to Peter’s father, but Gamora isn’t about to get into semantics _now_.

“Yes,” she says.

“God.”

“I’m not the one with the high opinion of himself.”

Peter snorts, grin turning lopsided and then – softening, along with all of the rest of him.

“So,” he says. “Mothers, huh?”

Gamora looks away and down, eyes catching on a thin scar peeking out from under his stretched t-shirt, and then to her own hands, smooth and unblemished despite all their years of battle. 

“Did your mother like to make people laugh?”

She feels rather than hears the catch in his breath, the sudden change in the cadence of his heartbeat.

And then he says,

“Dunno if – if you’d call it that, exactly. She was always smiling, you know? Made _me_ laugh a whole lot, before – just. I was just a kid though, prob’ly thought a whole buncha dumb shit was funny.”

“Hmm,” says Gamora, unable to stop herself.

“Yeah yeah, still do,” agrees Peter, rolling his eyes. And then almost sobers, the lopsidedness of his smile morphing into – something else. “But she – Mom was _happy_. A happy sorta person. Even when things were – y’know. Awful.”

“I see,” says Gamora. She traces her bottom lip with her teeth.

“Hey,” says Peter; simple.

Thanos is gone, Gamora thinks. Things should be a lot more simple than they are.

“I keep – remembering.” Gamora takes a breath. “Remembering that my mother would make people laugh. But I don’t know – don’t know if it’s a _real_ – if it’s –”

“You’re worried you’re mixing my mom and yours up,” says Peter, like he’s breathing the words out. Gamora smiles, almost in defeat, and tilts her head away. There’s an awkward rustle, and she feels him extract an arm out from where they’re pressed against his sides, elbow jutting out as he brings his hand up to push away the curtain of her hair. “Hey,” he says again.

“I just thought,” Gamora starts. “I just – thought. I don’t know.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Peter offers, bringing his head up a little so that he can catch her eye. 

“I know that,” says Gamora. She sucks in another breath, and in tandem relaxes against him, letting herself lie down fully and crossing her arms against his collarbone to rest her chin against. “It’s just disconcerting, not being able to trust myself.”

“Ah,” says Peter, and drops his head back down, nodding wisely at the ceiling. 

And then he says, “She’s as good as your mom, though, you know.”

“What?”

“I mean –” His eyes flick down to meet hers. “My mom, I mean. They’re – they’re not the same person, I know that. Obviously. And it doesn’t change – but if you ever need – I mean, I guess I’m just trying to say if you ever like, _need_ to think of someone, y’know, and you can’t remember stuff for shit, just – ask me to tell you a story, or something, and just think of her as yours too.”

She’s quiet for a moment, somehow content – _compelled_ , maybe, is the more accurate term – to watch him watch her. They’ve left – are gone – past Terra’s atmosphere and two jumps away, floating among the stars once more. She’s wondered more than once over the years what it is about Peter that makes him so at home in the stars – has thought in fleeting moments whether it’s simply a side-effect of his upbringing, or an imprint of his genetic makeup. There’s something to be said about being wary of a planet that holds nothing but bad memories, but Peter is relaxed out here in the black like he isn’t in any other setting.

 _Meredith loved stargazing ever since she was a little girl_ , Pops had told her, that same night on the porch. His voice had been quiet, understated, like if he spoke too loud he’d lose something. _Couldn’t get enough of it. Figures, I guess, that things’d turn out the way they did_.

Gamora wasn’t sure what he had meant, then, but now … Gamora had not been born in the stars. She had not grown into a young woman with stories of the wonders of galaxies and the rainbows in nebulas – nor with lessons on opportunities to be seized in the black, thrills to be found at the controls of a ship. She knew no one pleasant out there in the unknown, not as a child nor as a youth. She is comfortable, yes, because she has learned to be. But – 

And here, she wonders, suddenly: did her mother love the stars? She can’t remember. 

“You mean,” says Gamora slowly, testing the words on her tongue. “Share her memory between us.”

Peter offers a smile, crooked on one end, and Gamora tilts her head again. Of course, her statement is tautological. Meredith Quill has been shared with all of them for what she might count as years, now. 

Gamora nods, and lets her fingers edge forward to trace over that thin scar. “She was a good person,” she decides on, finally. “You are like her, I think.”

The hitch in Peter’s breath is obviously audible, this time, and the warmth of his hand coming up to cover hers obviously tangible. She can feel the point between his thumb and forefinger where his guns have left callouses, the roughened pads of the rest of his fingers.

“Hey,” he says.

“What?”

“I have a theory.”

Gamora lets a small smile curl at the corner of her lips.

“Oh?”

“You’re like your mother, too.”

Gamora blinks, rapidly, like something else is controlling her eyelids. 

Her vision of herself in her mind’s eye is so much sharper now than it was when she had first broken away, when she was stiff and alone in her cell at the Kyln, when she was angry and terrified outside the Collector’s den on Knowhere. She remembers Nebula’s tight frame, curled inwards against the wall in the hallway of the Avenger’s facility, and Mantis, trying to shape her own self with the help of others. 

Peter says, _You’re like your mother, too_ , and Gamora’s vision, sharpened but still blurry, acquires a certain strand of preciousness that she had not thought she was capable of attributing to herself.

It hurts, that she cannot remember the details of her mother’s face, the truth of how she’d coax laughs from her husband, the exact slope of her warmth towards other people. But Gamora thinks – she has been prompted by the mere thought of her her entire life, just as Peter has by Meredith. And now Gamora has Meredith also, and something about this thought fuses something in her chest.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and presses her cheek down against Peter’s knuckles. And again: “Thank you.”

(In a moment, they will be laughing again.)

“We’ll be alright,” he says for now, bringing up his thumb to trace her skin. “I got a feeling.”

**Author's Note:**

> do any of yall actually read these lmao anyways:
> 
> meredith quill is the moral backbone of the entire gotg franchise and thats a fact boys. 
> 
> related -- gotg is by NO means a feminist masterpiece (its …. trying, sort of, vaguely) but it gave me four ladies, all of whom i loved, and most of whom were actually given the chance to develop on screen independent of a romance with a dude as their own person. however minor some of these arcs were (by dint of the plot focus -- tragic, i know), they were still THERE in a way that most other marvel movies havent even come close to achieving, and i just ... appreciated that mantis, gamora, and nebula are all unique, vibrant personalities. they have all canonically experienced abuse and trauma and all deal with it and go forwards after it in very different ways, all of which are shown to be relatively valid. 
> 
> and meredith -- meredith! she falls under the unfortunate Dead Mom Trope, yes, but even so, meredith somehow retains an element of three-dimensionality that in my experience dead mothers are often denied in these sorts of stories. through her few scenes, peter's enduring love (and her clear influence on who he is and what choices he makes), and, interestingly, the two mixtapes, you see a fuller picture of meredith than i'd have ever thought possible. i came into this fic thinking that she'd be terribly difficult to write, because i had nothing but a few lines to go off of, but quite the opposite i found her every move obvious and natural to me as i wrote. that's pretty rare to achieve for a character with, as i said, five lines. its good scoob.
> 
> finally, gamora is obviously the most present in this fic, in every scene, because she's the female lead -- she's arguably one of the most well-developed, multi-dimensional, complex female characters in the entire mcu, which is not saying a lot but like. what an icon. of course she's the most present. 
> 
> and now for informational notes:  
> \- nowhere in any canon are gamora's parents' names ever recorded so i just!!! MADE ONE UP!!! aint that swell  
> \- gamora and peter are very space married as of right now, half a year after the first film, and they havent even kissed. 4 years from now do u really doubt the possibility of them impulsively getting hitched in some random backwater outpost because they groot got excited about the prospect of gamora holding a bouquet of flowers;;  
> \- elements of this fic were definitely inspired by other fics ive read in the gotg archive, but unfortunately i can't actually pinpoint where i got what idea from, because i read a lot of those a while ago and headcanons have been assimilated into my being, as headcanons are. specifically, though -- pops and his blue and orange striped camaro is from "Mustangs and Spaceships" by Peril_in_Peace, an amazing fic if i may say so myself  
> \- thanks for reading and as a final send off let me just say that thanos can choke!


End file.
